Family: Choules, last WWI combat vet, has died

SYDNEY — Claude Stanley Choules, the last known combat veteran of World War I, died Thursday at a nursing home in the Western Australia city of Perth, his family said. He was 110.

"We all loved him," his 84-year-old daughter Daphne Edinger told The Associated Press. "It's going to be sad to think of him not being here any longer, but that's the way things go."

Beloved for his wry sense of humor and humble nature, the British-born Choules — nicknamed "Chuckles" by his comrades in the Australian Navy — never liked to fuss over his achievements, which included a 41-year military career and the publication of his first book at the age of 108.

He usually told the curious that the secret to a long life was simply to "keep breathing." Sometimes, he chalked up his longevity to cod liver oil. But his children say in his heart, he believed it was the love of his family that kept him going for so many years.

"His family was the most important thing in his life," his other daughter, Anne Pow, told the AP in a March 2010 interview. "It was a good way to grow up, you know. Very reassuring."

Choules was born March 3, 1901, in the small British town of Pershore, Worcestershire, one of seven children. As a child, he was told his mother had died — a lie meant to cover a more painful truth: she left when he was 5 to pursue an acting career. The abandonment affected him profoundly, Pow said, and he grew up determined to create a happy home for his own children.

In his autobiography, "The Last of the Last," he remembered the day the first motor car drove through town, an event that brought all the villagers outside to watch. He remembered when a packet of cigarettes cost a penny. He remembered learning to surf off the coast of South Africa, and how strange he found it that black locals were forced to use a separate beach from whites.

He was drawn to the water at an early age, fishing and swimming at the local brook. Later in life, he would regularly swim in the warm waters off the Western Australia state coast, only stopping when he turned 100.

World War I was raging when Choules began training with the British Royal Navy, just one month after he turned 14. In 1917, he joined the battleship HMS Revenge, from which he watched the 1918 surrender of the German High Seas Fleet, the main battle fleet of the German Navy during the war.

"There was no sign of fight left in the Germans as they came out of the mist at about 10 a.m.," Choules wrote in his autobiography. The German flag, he recalled, was hauled down at sunset.

"So ended the most momentous day in the annals of naval warfare," he wrote. "A fleet of ships surrendered without firing a shot."

Millions died in the war, which lasted from 1914-1918. Choules and another Briton, Florence Green, became the war's last known surviving service members after the death of American Frank Buckles in February, according to the Order of the First World War, a U.S.-based group that tracks veterans.

Choules was the last known surviving combatant of the war. Green, who turned 110 in February, served as a waitress in the Women's Royal Air Force.

Choules met his wife Ethel Wildgoose in 1926 on the first day of his six-week boat trip from England to Australia, where he had been dispatched to serve as a naval instructor at Flinders Naval Depot in Victoria state. Ten months later, they were married.

They would spend the next 76 years together, until her death in 2003 at the age of 98.

Pow recalls that even in their final days together, they could often be spotted sitting side-by-side, holding hands.

"I think it was love at first sight," Choules wrote in his autobiography. "Certainly on my part, anyway."

He later joined the Royal Australian Navy and settled permanently Down Under, where he found life much more pleasant than in his home country.

"I was nobody," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio in November 2009 of his years in the UK. "But I was somebody here."

He and Ethel had three children, Daphne, Anne and Adrian, now in their 70s and 80s.

During World War II, he was the acting torpedo officer in Fremantle, Western Australia, and chief demolition officer for the western side of the Australian continent. Choules disposed of the first mine to wash ashore in Australia during the war.

He later transferred to the Naval Dockyard Police and remained in the service until his retirement in 1956.

He and Ethel bought a beach house south of Perth and spent the next 10 years cray-fishing, relishing the peaceful moments at the end of their days when they would have tea aboard their boat.

In his 80s, he took a creative writing course at the urging of his children and decided to record his memoirs for his family. The memoirs formed the basis of his autobiography, which was finally published three decades later in 2009. He would cite the book as one of his greatest achievements.

Even as he passed the century milestone, he remained remarkably healthy and active, and continued to dance until a few years ago. He liked to start each day with a bowl of porridge, and occasionally indulged in his favorite treats: mango juice and chocolate.

"He doesn't have medication because there's nothing wrong with him," Pow, his daughter, told the AP on Choules' 110th birthday.

"He's just going to quietly drift out of life — eventually," she added with a laugh.

Still, the aging process took its toll, and in recent years, he grew blind and nearly deaf. Despite that, his children say he retained his cheerful spirit and positive outlook on life.

"I had a pretty poor start," he told the ABC in November 2009. "But I had a good finish."